Bee-Dubya, honey, I jist thought I'd mention that I ain't dead. That wasn't me in the IG Jumper what blew up and took out Seattle. I've had to lay low for a bit 'cause they were after me, but them freds have all left now and I can tell you that I'm still panting for you. I'm rounding up another labrador and will be working my way southward to you. Stay tuned, as they say............................

Mere rhyming poetry is for pale dullards, the bookkeepers and accountants of the World of Poetry, little scuffling WoodyAllenesque nebbishes rooting around in their pathetic bag of tricks for a word to rhyme with "orange", composing poems that attempt to rhyme "oink", "boink", and "doink", while still telling a tale. Ha! I laugh at such as these.

A truly FREE spirit is not limited by such formalized conventions as rhyme, and the couplets he composes are of living flesh, not lifeless prose!

Malcolm, from your poem I take it you're first love was dirt and rocks? Hey, I don't mind if a guy wants to make sex dirty and kinky, but the mental image of you prancing around in the Highlands, your kilt a-tilt, looking for a convenient cave or blowhole is certainly arresting. Mon, ye ca' get worms!

﻿Enough of this flimsy doggerel, I say! Stand aside and let a real poet speak!

Oh! How like a waterfall, this thundering bliss Ascending the starry steps of the trembling void Puissant with its thousand stars and memories And 'twas only yesterday that we tippled tea Upon the esplanade under the Paris sky What lofty pinnacle of storm hast thou summoned me to, my love? And doth the plumy tendrils of thy nascent desire Stretch forth to succour or to drown me? So far from my first love, my boyhood Scottish moors!

You owe me no subscription: then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man. But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul."

Yeah, man -- can I get a witness?? You certainly have a way with others' words, I must say!

"Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man. But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul."

Ol' Pete's got hisself a new set a longies now. While he was flounderin' in the warm water (water's something Pete ain't had a lot of acquaintance with), his old suit took off. Last seen it was runnin' off t'wards the Teton Mountains, screaming "Sasquatch, My Love! 'Tis I, come at last!"

Some of the Legionnaires took a shot at it, but we couldn't tell if they hit it or not 'cause of all the holes already in it. Mostly they jist let it be, 'cause they didn't want to cross up True Love.

After we pulled Pete out, we found that he was plumb skinny! And he still had his nose! Shucks, we thought he'd got his nose bit off in a fight years back, and there wasn't one of us didn't know that 237 pounds of him'd wash right off.

'Course, the tree huggers got after Pete fer pollutin' the Port Neuf River, but he jist ask 'em "How kin ya tell?" and they backed right off. Faucet water does taste a bit funny right now, though, them that drink it says.

It's about that time of year in Idaho when he can take off the long underwear for the season. I suggest you not try to wash it--proceed directly to a decent burial for the poor garment. Order him a new one out of the Sears catalog. They come in two pieces now, tops and bottoms. (The sox are extra).

No, most folks forgit why it was they joined. Likker, fornicatin', plunderin', and such-like stuff kin do that to a feller. Lots of Legionnaires have only their horses and other Legionnaires as friends, after a while, and them at a distance: bathin' aren't real big in the Legion (sorta a mollycoddle, townie, dude kinda thing), and Legionnaires tend to sit upwind from one another; the horses move upwind from everybody.

Sometimes it gits pretty bad. Saturday jist past, we had ta toss ol' Siff Pete into the warm springs at Lava after we'd found that his Winchester, two Colts, a saddle, a derringer, his long underwear, and his two Bowie knives had all moved upwind of him. Even then it wouldn'ta been too bad, but ol' Pete'd been wearing that long handled underwear straight through the last two winters.

Heck no! Them's my official titles and things in the Idaho Legion. I just speak for the Legion, too. If you want to call Big Momma MOAB something else, that's okay -- as long as you're not in Idaho when you do it.

If you do it in Idaho, you'll have to answer to The Legion and the penalty is gruesome beyond all comprehension.

Hencefore, this thread shall no longer be known simply as MOAB, but in honor of Amos' observation that it is close to "being equal to all the rest of the Mudcat prior to 1999 combined", I, The Commandant Generalissimo, Head Wrangler, and Top Hand of the Idaho Legion declare that from this day and moment forward, for all time, this thread will be known to all and sundry as